JUDGE SIDES WITH PUBLIC CITIZEN IN MOTION TO RELEASE DOCUMENTS IN GUIDANT PRICING CASE

A federal judge ruled that Guidant must make judicial records from a product pricing case public, Public Citizen said. The ruling came in response to a motion filed by the advocacy group in August.

The sealed summary judgment records were from a recently settled case in which two subsidiaries of Guidant sued healthcare consulting firm Aspen Healthcare Metrics for publishing information about the prices of Guidant pacemakers.

Attorney Paul Alan Levy argued before Judge Donovan Frank in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota that the information was highly important to the public interest and should be unsealed, Public Citizen reported, adding that Guidant had provided no documentation of a need for secrecy.

Frank ruled that Guidant must release all of the summary judgment briefs and most of the supporting affidavits, while allowing most of the supporting exhibits to remain sealed "for reasons that he did not sufficiently explain," Public Citizen said.

Guidant's efforts to prevent its device prices from being published hinders price transparency and "threatens to foster the artificial elevation of prices, possibly limiting public access to affordable healthcare," the group said.

The firm's attempts to keep court records secret "also deny other hospitals, purchasing organizations and healthcare industry actors subject to Guidant's lawsuit threats access to vital information to better prepare their own defense," Public Citizen said.

The unsealed documents can be viewed on the district court's docket or at www.citizen.org/litigation/forms/cases/CaseDetails.cfm?cID=234 (http://www.citizen.org/litigation/forms/cases/CaseDetails.cfm?cID=234) as they become available.